Doug Wright, who played a discreet but indispensable role in tearing down the Embarcadero Freeway after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, died on July 30 in Greenbrae after a stroke. He was 68.

He was San Francisco's deputy mayor for transportation when the 6.9 temblor damaged the elevated waterfront roadway. While politicians debated whether to replace the freeway with a boulevard at ground level, Mr. Wright was the one making sure that such a then-radical move would pass muster with the state and federal officials who would need to approve the project's funding.

"Were it not for Doug, there would be no open Embarcadero today," said former Mayor Art Agnos, who persuaded a bare majority of the Board of Supervisors in 1990 to vote to tear down the concrete viaduct.

Mr. Wright was the planning director in Portland, Ore., in the 1970s when that city replaced a riverfront highway with a park. He then served in the federal Department of Transportation under President Jimmy Carter before coming to San Francisco in 1981, where he was employed by the city's Public Utilities Commission when Agnos was elected in 1987.

"I wasn't sure at first that removing the Embarcadero would work, but Doug said 'come with me to Portland and see what we did,' " Agnos recalled. After that did the trick, Agnos said, Mr. Wright "was the guy who knew his way around Washington and was introducing me to the key officials."

His work was also valued by Rudy Nothenberg, the city's chief administrative officer during Mr. Wright's decade at City Hall. Before the elevation to deputy mayor for transportation - a post that only existed during Agnos' one term as mayor - Mr. Wright represented Nothenberg on the planning commission.

"I hate the word 'vision,' but he had a vision as to how transportation should be part of larger efforts to sustain the urban environment," Nothenberg said. "More than anyone I worked with, he was the kind of person you would want as a fermenter of ideas and possibility."

Mr. Wright hailed from Iowa, where he was born in 1946 and earned degrees in business and regional planning at the University of Iowa. After several years as a planner in Cleveland, he made the move west to Portland in 1973.

After leaving City Hall, Mr. Wright worked as a consultant on transportation and planning issues for governments along the West Coast. He also was a longtime board member of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy - where he helped pull together funding for such efforts as the restoration of Crissy Field - and the Market Street Railway.

"He had a Peace Corps heart and linebacker eyes," Agnos said, defining the latter as "the ability to see the whole field, plug holes, anticipate problems as they arose."

Mr. Wright is survived by his wife, Lillian Hames of Greenbrae, and daughters Alison Wright and Alexandra Wright. A memorial will be held at 2 p.m. Aug. 28 at Cavallo Point Lodge, Fort Baker in Sausalito.